


Waking Dream

by kanerainx



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, i guess theres some fluff, someone that cares about her!!, thats new!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-04-04 08:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14016147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanerainx/pseuds/kanerainx
Summary: The Doll meets a Hunter that cares.





	1. Gift

That was what she was told.

The Doll was born to serve. 

Gherman created her for the Hunters in the Dream. 

The Blood Echoes are taken from her as she puts strength in the Hunters. The only things that are hers, and only hers, are the shreds of memories that flitter around her mind. The shadows in her chest, unknown to her. 

They were named “emotions”, Gherman had told her. 

Those prickles offered a new experience, something she has felt in rare memory. 

A dark shadow flickered at the bottom of the steps.

“Hello.” The Hunter was covered in foul-smelling blood, the leather slick with guts and mud, her dark hair tied in a ponytail. She recognized from her gait that she had been injured. The blood dripped down from the hem of her boot. “Have you been well?” This one still kept her composure. What for?

“Good Hunter.” Doll folded her hands on her lap, “Of course. There are beautiful things to see from this Dream.”

This Hunter was a bit different than most others. She lingered longer, not bolting off into the workshop or taking the strength from the Blood Echoes before heading out of the dream, scant being here for a minute, as if they detested even smelling the air. 

She would be making small talk or gaze at her for a second with a look she could not decipher. It did not resemble the usual commentary she heard many times over.

Whenever she visited, her chest was pleasantly warm.

This time, the Hunter sat down next to her and started a conversation. Talking about the state of Yharnam, showing her a sketch she had made of some surroundings. She seemed to completely ignore her injury.

“How have you been making these beautiful sketches, good Hunter? These are unlike any I have seen.”

She stayed silent for a few seconds, “Have you ever been out of this Dream?” 

“It is not my place to leave home.”

The Hunter put down her sketchbook and turned her body towards her, the muscles under the leather shifting with the motion. “Have you ever seen anything out of this Dream? From the Waking world?” Her eyebrows were knitted together.

“I have seen some. In the past, Gherman brought some artifacts to this Dream. Guns, books, twisted metal, blood…. You, Good Hunter.”

Another moment of silence. This time, The Hunter looked rather embarrassed, “…Alright. Could you hold out your hands?” She took out a small knife and cut a few pages out of her notebook, being careful to not stain it with blood from her sleeves. They gently floated down into the Doll’s open hands. 

“Sketches? Hunter, I cannot turn them into-”

“It is a gift, for you.” She said quickly, standing up on one leg, the blood dripping onto the white flowers underneath her, “I will bring more once I have seen more of the world.”

What were gifts? She had no time to ask as she reached out to grab the Hunter’s cuffs.

“Good Hunter.” The Doll was surprised with how firm her voice felt, “I cannot allow you to go out of the Dream with injury.”

“Injury?” She put her hand on her thigh and chuckled lightly, “It is of no concern. You musn’t worry on my behalf.”

“Will you rest a moment longer?”

“Of course.”

The Doll leaned forward and put her hand on the thigh, feeling the area out. The injury looked severe. The Hunter’s eyes wandered whilst the inspection was ongoing, returning her attention to the Doll as she slid a strange liquid in her hand.

“What is this?”

“A potent version of your Blood Vials. It should heal you, good Hunter.”

An indecipherable expression washed over her face, “Thank you.” 

As strange as it was, she would do anything to see it again.

-  
It became a ritual. 

She would be resting in her chair or doing her every day chores. The Hunter would appear. She would find her, give her gifts, and even some trinkets from the Waking world. She would inspect the Hunter for injuries and give her remedies accordingly. Other times, she would be dreaming and wake up to the Hunter lying on the grass next to the gravestones. At those times, she seemed to think better than to disturb her.

She ran her hand over the creases of the multiple parchments, admiring the lining of the Hunter’s making, a red crusty stain on the bottom of the newest pages. A gifted music box that was laid on the arm of the chair played a sweet sound that seemed almost melancholic. 

(“Why are you giving me many artifacts, good Hunter?”

“They are gifts.”

“I have been meaning to ask this for a while, good Hunter, what are they? Gifts?”

“They are… objects you give to someone to make them feel better, or something that shows them you care for them.”

“Ah. So you care for my wellbeing?”

“Is it that strange?”

“Of course. I have been created for your sake, good Hunter. Would that mean that I am your gift?”

The leather-clad woman sighed, “I refuse to believe that.” She answered tersely, her jaw set.

The Doll blinked. What was so hard to believe? She could not say anything in response.)

The Hunter even pointed out that the Doll would sometimes be smiling as she looked at her sketches. 

Once, she would’ve asked Gherman about these new experiences. 

As she put the papers in a wooden box, a disturbance. Ragged breaths. The Hunter’s steps were heavy, dragging onto the stone. Soon after, there was a shout, high pitched and whining. The spirits shimmered in the presence of anger.

Something was not right. 

The Doll saw the Hunter on her knees near the edge of the Dream, clutching a small cloth-like object in her hands. Her head was hung low. Water dripping down her chin, blood covering every inch of her gloves.

“Good Hunter,” She said to the Hunter’s turned side, “Are you in distress?”

She did not answer. The water kept falling. The Doll stood in silence near her for several minutes.

“I have seen so much suffering, pain, and yet…” After long, the kneeling Hunter finally spoke, “This place. The dream. It is a nightmare, isn't it?”

“It is the Hunter’s Dream.” 

“So it is.” She laughed sourly, gruffly removing her hat, “Forgive me. Strange questions.” She pocketed the ribbon after some apprehension. 

The Doll wiped the water that was making grooves on the Hunter’s tired grime and blood covered face. It was hot, almost burning. She could feel her jerk back instinctively, although she then stilled.

“Are these tears, good Hunter?”

“..They are.”

Slowly, she sat down next to the Hunter. “A gift. Will you accept it, Hunter?”

“Of course.”

She wrapped her arms around her. The Hunter was tense. As the Doll kept her in her arms, her body soon relaxed and she allowed herself to get pulled even closer, even sliding her trembling hands on her shawl.

“You are cold.”

The beast in the Hunter’s soul was gone once again.


	2. Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doll dreams.

The Doll was so cold. 

The Hunter’s thoughts were fragmented, she could barely speak. Her speech was erratic. Her throat bunched up. She felt like she was going insane.

That was one of the only coherent thoughts she had during her episode.

She remembers her hands on her face, her thumb wiping the tears under her eyes.

The coolness soon disappeared as her sword went through the monster.

Again. Again, and again. Grueling. 

The Hunter took a step forward to plunge the blade deeper through the arm of an open mouthed giant. A fountain of blood sprayed to the ground before the storm washed the red between the cobblestones. 

The body fell heavily, disintegrating under her jagged blade. 

The blood stayed. The blood always stayed. Heat pooled behind her ears.

The Hunter didn’t even take a second look at the trail of dead that got her there.

She looked out to the horizon overlooking the city. The crescent moon hid behind the rain clouds. Thunder struck near, shaking the ground underneath her as the smell of ozone grew stronger. The Hunter didn’t flinch; she only turned back towards the church. 

A shadow hung above, high on the tower, slowly waving back and forth to the rhythm of the howling of the wind and the battering rain. With nary a word, she walked out to it. 

She was almost mesmerized.

Suddenly, The Hunter was plucked up into the air. 

Searing pain coursed through her body as the spindly extremities wrapped around her, and she opened her mouth to scream. 

Nothing echoed in the church but drops hitting stone.

Where was she?

That was the thought that came into her mind after she woke face to a blank sky.

The haze in her mind – gone. 

The Hunter straightened out, inspecting her limbs. No injuries. 

She had her fair share of experiences face to new environments but this one was most peculiar. She knew the city as if it fit in the palm of her hand, but….. It was as if the town was bleached white, like made of bone. Void of life.

Suddenly, she saw a fellow Hunter. She saw, as he turned around, that his eyes were covered with a handkerchief, red splotches appearing through the cloth. 

A bloody gun in his hand and a cane in the other, he limped over the mangled body. 

And lunged towards her.

..That was her first encounter in this new world.

Keep moving. You will get back. 

Those were the words that kept her going in this new and eldritch world, as she waded in the dark replica of Yharnam and its madness. She nary slept a wink. She found none sane and many more enemies. The only place she had even relaxed was on a balcony, where moaning lumps of meat were the only beings in her vicinity. At least they weren’t suffering anymore, the Huntress thought as she gazed behind her. She took care of that. 

Kill Maria of the Astral Clocktower. The crazed hunter muttered in his low scraping tone, looking over the body of Ludwig. She did not trust him, though she hadn’t trusted anything in this wretched nightmare. She thought she was going mad.

Lady Maria intrigued her. A lone huntress, guarding the entrance of her sins. When the lumps could talk, they always talked about her kindness, and how she regretted her decision to help in those gruesome experiments.

The kindest thing in this damned place.

The large doors pried heavily under her fingertips. Rust covered the iron clamps of the doors. 

The first thing she noticed in the room was the heavy tang of iron and salt. She took a deep breath and took a step in, the doors closing with a groan behind her.

In the middle of the room, a woman was sprawled on a wooden chair, her silvery hair wrapped around her face like a halo; blood forming a ring around her that spread outwards. She seemed ethereal, yet menacing. Two swords were leaning against her chair.

She seemed familiar. The Hunter weighed on one foot to the other.

“Lady Maria?” She said, her voice echoing in the large dark room, the only light illuminating this place was the light streaming through the pale shadow of the clock and the soft glow of candle light hovering above in a chandelier.

The body was inert. She took a step closer.

The Huntress was right in front of the chair, an inch away from the bloodied boots. From this close, she could almost see her face, hidden by her lowered head. There was a pang in her heart.

Suddenly, the body grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards her. 

Her grip was steel, her eyes purplish-gray, with intense yet soft gaze. The red stream in front of her dark coat offset her pale colour.

Lady Maria whispered something under her breath, tender, close, as if holding her in her arms. 

She was The Doll.

Her breath hitched. The Huntress’s weapons, normally extensions of herself, were heavy. She felt them slip from her hands.

“Ah.” Maria’s expression changed very little, her eyebrow only tilting slightly at the splash. The Hunter found it unnerving. “So you will not resist, Hunter?”

“…I will not. Do what you will. Liberate me from my curiosity.” She clenched and unclenched her fists, although she did not move. Her hands dropped to her sides when Maria let go of her grasp. “Please, let me pass.”

She could only feel sharp pain as the two blades entered her abdomen. She crumbled forward.

-

It was curious how this Hunter came back weaponless. It was curious how she did not succumb to the Hunter’s curse. 

It was curious how she kept questioning her, even after she has killed her multiple times.

“Back, Hunter?” Lady Maria was standing, blood pooling at her feet. It was her own.

“Are you…?” The Hunter gazed at the blood and then at the swords in Lady Maria’s torso.

“It will not kill me.” She paused as she took out the blades, not even flinching in the process. The Hunter winced. “Pray tell, my Hunter. What wills you to keep falling into my blades?”

“What wills you to keep falling into yours?”

Pain.

-

“Lady Maria?”

“I grow weary. You are quite persistent. Your mind is a lot stronger than I first thought.” She sat down in her chair and crossed her legs.

A stringent pause settled itself in the atmosphere.

The Hunter stood there, still. After a few moments, she allowed herself to sit on her knees. 

She touched the wounds through her white long shirt and winced.

“You are in pain.”

“I am not a being devoid of feeling, unfortunately. I’ll have to make do.” The Huntress patted the side of her ripped coat, “How can you sustain all those injuries without flinching, Lady Maria?”

“Do you think you are in a position to ask delicate questions such as those, Hunter?”

Trickles of water ran past her boots, a constant in the room whilst the two were in silence. The salty brine stung her eyes.

“This is the fate that awaits all of us. What will it do to delay the inevitable?” 

“There is someone that I care about in the Dream.” The Hunter said absentmindedly, an empty smile on her lips.

“Are you speaking of Gherman?”

The Hunter laughed, though her eyes didn’t, “What would I find respectable about that man?”

“He is your teacher.”

“It is uncanny.” She laughed, “She has told me the same thing.”

“She?”

“The Doll. You, look, act like her. And she cannot leave that place, as you are.”

“That is preposterous.”

She said nothing.

Maria maintained the gaze. There was a hard line to her lips. 

“Why would I believe you?”

“What reason would I have to lie?”

“Gherman. Is he the one that..?” She said under her breath.

The Hunter tensed up.

“..How is she like, Hunter?” 

“I do not know what would the point of-“

“Tell me.” This time, there was an edge. The Hunter decided it’d be safer to tell her then to get a world of pain.

“..She is kind. Blunt. She loves jokes, though she does not always understand them. She likes when I give her trinkets she hasn’t seen in the Dream.” The Hunter paused, “She cares. Deeply. She has taught me boundless more than Gherman ever will.”

“You know nothing of me.” 

“I know you are kind. You are the kindest person in this place. You care about the lives you have inadvertently ruined. You tried to save them. You…tried.”

“You have met them.”

“That goes without saying. They won’t suffer any longer.” 

“Hunter.”

“They would have never returned to normal. I have done them a mercy. From whatever you Old Hunters have done to them, they were long gone.”

Maria shifted silently. There was no expression on her face but a twitch of her mouth.

Her fingers, on the other hand, clutched the wood so hard it splintered under her gloves.

The Hunter reiterated, “I will not resist.”

“Why do you want to anger me so?” 

“A Hunter lays outside for me to kill you. I do want to go through, but you are sworn to defend the secret. It means either of us dies….And I cannot kill you.”

“Why?”

“She- You are keeping me anchored to reality.”

“We have only met.”

“You remind me that someone, someone I _care _about, exists outside of this world. You cannot imagine how close I came to losing my mind before I came into this room.” The Hunter paused, looking at the hands moving as they cast a pale shadow on the ground, “What would lie beyond this clock? An endless maddening space? Or a door to her world? If it was the former……If I kill you…I may as well disappear.”__

____

The Doll opened her eyes. 

____

It felt like she had a hot iron pressed against her chest. 

____

She laid on the chair on the verge of falling forward, the clock ticking ever so loudly.

____

Her Hunter was in danger.

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait.


	3. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. I had a little trouble writing the new chapter + no ideas. I hope you guys like it.

She _is_ mad.

Maria thought as she gazed at the Hunter pressing her hand on the pale glass.

The Hunter ran her hand on its surface, as if trying to get her hand through it.

“Do not try. It will not break.”

“What’s behind the glass?”

“Tame your curiosity, Hunter. Although I grow tired of killing you, it is no excuse to dally around.”

The Hunter snorted. She did not stop.

Maria, however, did not move a muscle.

_She will not leave. She cannot kill me. I cannot kill her. As long as she knows her loved one is alive, she will not lay a finger on me._

Maria took bitter pleasure in that knowledge.

“Does she really have… a… resemblance?” She sat down on her chair, still maintaining an eye on her.

The Hunter turned, tilting her head. “Again, yes.”

“Well, she seems absolutely pleasant to be around.”

“It does not matter what you think of her.” She turned back to the glass, “Was she in the Dream in your time?”

“No.”

“Then you know what that implies?”

The time they spent in silence got her quite some time alone with her thoughts,“I am well aware.”

“You do not find it maddening that he made her and trapped her there?”

“…A mistake, I’m sure.”

“A mistake.” This time, she snapped back quickly. An edge was added to her tone, like iron. “A mistake? She had no choice.”

“Neither did any Hunter.”

“I’ve become a Hunter from my own will. I am in this room because I decided to. She did not decide to be trapped in that goddamned Dream.” Pause. “Maria, do you not find your resemblance to her disconcerting?”

She did not say anything.

“He is a twisted man. I hope you see that, truly.”

And they fell into another wordless lull.

Maria felt a painful pang in her heart.

-

The Hunter was sitting down; laying out her objects on a small wooden plank she brought in the corner of the waterlogged clock tower. She had no chair, strangely enough, opting to sit in the ankle high water next to her.

Observing from her chair, Maria was fascinated at the speed which the Hunter placed all the things in her pack, squeezed tightly on the tiny wooden surface. 

The Hunter gazed intensely at every object and whispered their names under her breath. This world had the tendency to render one mad, so a little exercise like this wasn’t out of the blue. 

From the corner of her eye, Maria looked at the book with ends and odds of paper sticking out of it, leaning dangerously against the corner of the wood.

"Drawings of Yharnam." The Hunter answered without glancing up. She handed it to Maria gingerly. "It must have changed since your time."

"Indeed, it has." She flipped through it. Unbeknownst to her, a little smile drew itself on her face. "You have good handiwork."

"...Keep it." 

"Are you sure?" The Hunter nodded slowly. There was something indescribable in her eyes. "Well, Hunter, I shan't refuse."

She took a deep breath and looked away, lips tightly squeezed together. She continued her exercise.

"Interesting." She said, picking up one of the bottles of the dark red liquid. The markings on the paper looked faded out, old. “You haven’t consumed them all.”

Even if she was peeved, she did not show it. “I have not. They are gifts.”

“…Vileblood.”

“Vileblood? It is her gift. I do not know the reason why I would not keep it.”

Maria didn’t say anything.

Her again.

Still, she examined the serum, tight between her fingers.

“It is no gift.” Maria finally spat, throwing it on her lap.

“What is it to you?”

“My curse.”

The silence made sure that nothing else was asked.

-

What could she do?

She could not find Gherman.

In his workshop? Among the graves? In all the fields?

He was not here.

Her Hunter wasn’t there.

She felt like her chest was being fraught tight, as if she was going to break, looking at the endless empty fields with the bright crescent moon without her Hunter under it.

-

A hollow ring went through the clock tower, stirring the resting Hunter.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

The echo reverberated throughout the room, even swirling the water around her. In the center of the room, the first thing she noticed was the sleeping Doll on her throne. 

She looked peaceful, her eyes closed and motionless.

She rose to her feet. It was silent once more. A chill ran through her. 

Maria remained still, devoid of movement at first glance.

Her breath hitched.

The Hunter extended her hand towards her but stopped. She let it fall to her side.

She isn’t her.

The leather clad woman remained standing, gnawing at her lip.

Finally, she whirled around.

The doors looked blackened by rust, unopened. The drip of the water ran down its length, settling at the base of her boots. She felt a strange ease as she placed her gloved hands on them. 

Glancing back, she smiled.

“Good bye.”

The doors closed behind her.


End file.
